No One Suspected
by BlueRubyBeat
Summary: Hermione hated how her life was so she decided to do something about it. That something was killing Ronald Weasley.


**No One Suspected**

 **Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling does.

 **AN:** Chaser 1 of the Tutshill Tornados for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition - Round 11.

 **Task:** Needs to START and END with the same word.

 **Prompt:** Potion - Draught of the Living Death

 **Optional Prompts:** 1) (dialogue) "I'm bored. Play with me!", 5) (word) coffee,  & 8) (word) bounce

 **Word Count:** 1,787 words

"Avada Kedavra!" — Speaking

'Knowledge is power!' — Thinking

 **~.~**

'Why is this happening?' Hermione Granger thought with hate and rage coloring her thoughts. She just graduated Hogwarts not even a month ago and everything was going downhill. At first everything was doing okay after the war. She, Harry and Ron helped, with other witches and wizards, with rebuilding Hogwarts.

At first she was going to get her parents but she kept pushing it back saying to herself, "I'll get them after Hogwarts is rebuilt," or "I'll get them during the Christmas Holidays," or "I'll get them during the spring holidays," then finally, "I'll get them after I graduate Hogwarts." It's now about three weeks after graduating and she still had not gotten her parents. Hermione's main reason, besides being a bit busy herself, was that Ron was supposed to go with her and he kept putting it off.

She tried to persuade him, even saying that she would snog him until his hearts content, but he wouldn't budge. Also it didn't help that his mother kept hounding her to get married to him already since they were engaged and she finished school. She honestly couldn't believe she was engaged to him, at first she liked it and everyone said it was meant to be, but lately her feelings for him had been changing. Molly Weasley kept her overbearing nature and stated that Hermione now could start a family with Ron while he trained as an Auror with Harry. Hermione did not want to be a stay at home mother, she wanted to get a mastery and research new things. Eventually Hermione would like to have a family, but at the moment she didn't want to and she was leaning toward breaking up with Ron as well.

With an enraged yell, Hermione punched her pillow, once, twice, three times, then continuously while yelling negatively about Ron, Molly, wizarding folk in general, and everyone that wanted to butt in her life. Currently she was staying at the Weasley's since she had yet to get her parents. No one else in the house could hear her screaming since she silenced her room. After a few minutes of beating her pillow into submission, she stopped and sat on her bed with her head in her hands. 'I can't believe how stupid I was for agreeing to marry Ronald,' she thought to herself. 'How can I break it? How can I break it so they will stop bothering me forever?'

All the pain she experienced from the war and the year after from Molly's overbearingness to marry, Ron's eagerness to touch her, and the general patriarchy of the Wizarding World, came to a head. All the thoughts and feelings she kept bottled up finally came pouring out. The hate in her heart surfaced and combined with her rage made her irrational. In her right mind Hermione would not condone violence and would rather use words but at the moment, all she could think about was ending Ron Weasley's life so hers could be free.

The problem was that normally ending an engagement would be easy but Ron had told everyone she slept with him, which did happen but she honestly didn't expect him to blab it to people. As a muggle-raised child, the social norm was that sleeping with someone before marriage was okay, as long as the girl did not get pregnant and the girl did not sleep around a lot. In the Wizarding World, if a girl slept with a boy, she had to marry him. Hermione did not know this and now could not call off the engagement, so the only solution was death.

Hermione did not want to kill him herself, but she could help him along to it. "That's right! I know what to do!" She exclaimed with a smile on her face before digging in her trunk. "Here it is! Advanced Potion-Making by Libatius Borage!" She smiled as she held the book before furiously turning the pages until she got to the potion she wanted.

"This will help me, Draught of the Living Death," Hermione's smile turned a little crazed with muttering to herself, not unlike Bellatrix Lestrange. "I will make this, give it to Ronald, then stage him to look like he killed himself. Wizards are stupid enough not to do autopsies, I don't think they even know what they are! Then he will be declared dead and they will bury him where he will suffocate until he really dies. Perfect! And this copy is Snape's so the potion will be absolutely perfect!"

Back in sixth year, even though Hermione was angry at Harry for 'cheating' by using Snape's edited potions book in class, she could not begrudge the intelligence in changing the potions to be perfect. So she did the only thing a student with a pursuit in knowledge would do, she copied the book. No one knew she copied the book and she did not tell anyone. Now was the perfect time to use the potion's book to brew the Draught of the Living Death potion and with Snape's changes it would be perfect.

"This will only take about an hour with Snape's changes," Hermione muttered as she read the instructions for the potion. "I'll just get the ingredients and quick whip up the potion. Ronald should be back soon and I can give it to him then. I cannot wait until I'm free!"

For the next hour and a half, Hermione retrieved all the ingredients and set out to start the potion. To keep herself awake, Hermione drank coffee. The coffee helped settle her nerves as well, which was a plus. It was not long until she finished her task and cleaned up the evidence. In her hand she held a glass vial with a clear liquid. The potion was done, now all she needed was her victim. A holler was heard through the bedroom walls, it was Molly yelling about dinner. Without a further thought, she placed the vial in her bedside drawer and with a bounce in her step, went downstairs to eat dinner with everyone.

Throughout dinner Hermione had a calm smile on her face. No matter how angry she was at Ron and everyone, she felt happy that it was all going to be over. It almost felt like a lucid dream as she ate and conversed through dinner with a seemingly happy expression. All too soon dinner was over and Ron turned to her. "I'm bored. Play with me!" Which was code for, 'let's have sex'. This was the perfect opportunity to put her plan in place, so Hermione gave him a smile, grabbed his hand and walked up the stairs to her room with him.

No one was the wiser with how Hermione was acting and with how dense Ron was, he would never figure it out. After they got to her room, she locked the door and added a silencing charm for the moment. Pretending she wanted to sleep with him, she pushed him onto the bed and straddled his waist. "Ron…" She whispered seductively, "I want to spice things up a bit." He grinned at her and put his hands on her behind, squeezing her rump. "Anything you want Hermione."

With a smile she leaned over him, giving him an ample view of her chest, and grabbed the vial from her bedside drawer. "I want you to drink this. It will enhance your senses and make it more pleasurable." Since Ron was utterly terrible at potions, he didn't know it was the Draught of the Living Death he was going to drink. With a doofus smirk, Ron grabbed the vial and downed the potion. It was a quick transition from Ron's smiling face, none the wiser, to him being in a death-like state.

"That was too easy," Hermione muttered, eyes lit with disgust. Getting off him, she moved to the next part of her plan. She stared at his form with a frown on her face for a few moments before it lit up with unholy glee. "I think…it will be better this way. I will be happier and more satisfied." Nodding to herself, she conjured a rope and spelled it into a noose. With quick precision, she tied it up to the rafters next to the bed, to seem like Ron would have walked off the bed with the noose around his neck to kill himself.

With a dark smile she used her wand to spell Ron in the air and moved him so the noose was around his neck, then suspended him in the air. With another spell she tightened the noose, then tied his hands behind his back with soft cloth so as not to leave any markings. Before she was going to have him pretend to kill himself but now…now she wanted him to die in front of her. She wanted to end his life, she wanted to watch the life leave his eyes. The only way for her to watch him struggle was to cancel out the Draught of the Living Death with the antidote, which was the Wiggenweld Potion. Just in case, Hermione brewed the antidote, "I'm glad I'm very thorough."

Quickly, Hermione gave Ron the potion and helped it down his throat before canceling the suspension spell. Ron woke up to the air leaving his lungs. He struggled to get out of the noose but his hands were tied behind his back. He looked down and saw Hermione's gleeful crazed face watching him slowly lose air. His last thought before perishing was that Hermione looked an awful lot like Bellatrix Lestrange.

Hermione couldn't contain her laughter, she laughed and laughed. Everything was getting to her, her intelligent but now insane mind thought that the slow death of one Ronald Weasley was hilarious and deliciously sweet. Although she was now insane, her mind was still brilliantly superior. With a quick swish of her wand, the soft cloth around Ron's wrists disappeared making it seem like he really did commit suicide.

To complete the picture, Hermione left the room, canceling the silencing ward and said a little loudly, "I'm going to freshen up, I'll be right back." She waited a few minutes in the bathroom before returning and screamed loudly in horror when she opened the door, as if it was the first time seeing him in that position. Everyone in the household appeared behind her and added to the chaos.

No one suspected Hermione. No one knew her mind broke and something else took root in her heart. No one knew and she kept it that way. The only question the Weasley family couldn't answer was: How could this happen? And why?

 **~.~**


End file.
